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CORNING – Corning Inc. on Tuesday reported third-quarter earnings of $1.01 billion and said it anticipates similar results for the company’s final quarter of 2014.

The company’s third-quarter performance marked two years of year-over-year quarterly earnings growth. Record core sale earnings of $282 million — a 25 percent year-over-year increase — were reported for the company’s Environmental Technologies division.

Core sales in Corning’s Display Technologies business, reported at $1.1 billion for the quarter, represented a 62 percent increase over the same period last year. A big driver in that business segment, the company said, was the acquisition of Samsung Corning Precision, which has been renamed Corning Precision Materials. The sales from the former Samsung-Corning Inc. joint venture are now being added to Corning’s ledger sheet.

“But another big driver was, in general, glass demand has been strong this year,” Corning Inc. Comptroller Tony Tripeny said. “We think demand for LCD glass at the retail level will be up 10 percent, which is stronger than we had been projecting before.”

Meanwhile, core sales in the Specialty Materials division, driven by shipments of Gorilla Glass for new products, grew by 10 percent over last year.

“Corning has been awarded a supplier innovation award from BMW and we think there are lots of opportunities for Gorilla Glass in the automotive industry,” said Tripeny. “It would make the products lighter, which would help with fuel efficiency.”

While the opportunities for using Gorilla Glass in the automotive industry are growing, the approval process can be slow.

“But the good news is they are making tons and tons of cars, so once you actually get in, there’s lots of business that you get,” Tripeny said.

The Twin Tiers largest employer said it had profit of 72 cents per share, which falls to 40 cents per share when earnings are adjusted by excluding the changes in the exchange rates of the Japanese yen and Korean won.

The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 37 cents per share. However, the revenue reported by the company, $2.54 billion, fell short of Wall Street’s $2.61 billion forecast.

“This has been an excellent year for Corning,” CFO James Flaws said in a statement. “We have grown sales and earnings each quarter and we anticipate the fourth quarter will continue this positive year-over-year trend.”

The company’s quarterly performance, Tripeny said, was the result of a growing balance between Corning’s divisions.

“Half of the growth came (out) of our display business, but half came from our non-display businesses,” he said. “In particular Environmental Technologies and Optical Communications were extremely strong during the quarter. As we look out for the full year, we’re on track for an excellent 2014.”

Production volumes in Display Technologies may be lower in the fourth quarter, Tripeny said, but price declines are expected to more moderate than they were during the third quarter.

“We always expect price declines as just being a part of the consumer electronics industry,” he said. “The issue for us was as long as those price declines are moderate, then we can do cost reductions to keep up with that and our profitability remains the same.”